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Grilled Chop

A grilled mutton or lamb chop seasoned with pepper, salt, and served with a parsley, lemon, and cayenne butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grilled Chop

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a clear fire.

  2. Season the chop with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Brush the grill with butter or salad oil.

Grill and serve

  1. Cook the chop for 4 minutes on each side over a hot fire.

  2. Mix a small pat of butter with chopped parsley, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper, and place it on the chop.

  3. Serve immediately.

  4. If using potatoes, cut them into matchsticks, fry in boiling fat until golden brown, drain well, and serve around the chop.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb chop
Is the main protein, which browns on the hot grill and stays juicy when cooked briefly.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the parsley and lemon flavors over the hot chop.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavor of the lamb.

The step that matters

Cook the chop for 4 minutes on each side over a hot fire. A hot fire browns the surface quickly, while too long a cook dries the meat. Timing each side keeps the inside juicy and the crust well browned.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter, parsley, lemon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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